“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

After leaving Salinas, along with of sv Party of Five, sv Sea Frog, and sv Last Tango we headed east on an overnight passage to Culebra. Although there was no wind and we were, once again, making our way under power, we had flat seas and a beautiful night, that is until the motor stalled! She started right back up and we continued on our merry way, when, a few minutes later she stalled again! It is not like Smitty to act up like this, obviously something is wrong- better let the armada know we may have an issue. Again, she started right back up and again about 15 minutes later she stalled – this time we were dead in the water. Captain Jesse went down below looked over a few things and decided that a fuel filter change would do the trick to resolve our issue. We started her back up and she ran great from that point on.:) We safely arrived in Ensenada Honda, Culebra the next day.

Culebra, part of Puerto Rico but is often referred to as one of the Spanish Virgin Islands, is located 17-miles east of the Puerto Rican mainland and about 12-miles west of St.Thomas. For such a small island she packs a ton of beauty. There are several beautiful beaches, most of which have incredible snorkeling. There is only one tiny little town and the only way to get there is via boat.

Hector el protector – made out of wood pallets from the junk yard by Thomas Dambos. The sculpture protects the island from visitors with bad intentions towards the nature of the island.

Flamenco Beach – voted one of the world’s most beautiful beaches

Tanks on Flamenco Beach

Just a stones throw from Culebra, Culebrita has beautiful beaches, great snorkeling, hiking, a lighthouse, and a bubbly pool.

Smitty at anchor in a Culebrita bay

After a short little sail over from Culebra, we hiked to the top of Culebrita to see the Culebrita Lighthouse and, of course, to take in the breathtaking views.

Once the oldest operating lighthouse in the Caribbean, Culebrita Lighthouse was closed by the US Navy in 1975. This lighthouse served as an aid to navigation through the Virgin Passage and the Vieques Sound connecting in the Puerto Rico Light System with the Cape San Juan Light. The United States Coast Guard has replaced the lighthouse with a solar powered light beacon. Over the years, several hurricanes have damaged this structure and, currently, the lighthouse is in danger of collapsing.

Culebrita Lighthouse 2016

Fun Fact:

Culebrita has wild goats. I thought this was a myth but Summer quickly proved us wrong.

Summer found some wild goats on Culebrita

After we went to just about every spot to snorkel and ate at Zacos Tacos at least twice (so awesome!), it was time for us to once again get a move on. It was already August and we needed to prepare for the heart of hurricane season. Next up: the Virgin Islands.

Arriving in Puerto Rico marked our first time clearing into an American controlled area. Since we left for the Bahamas in January we have been outside of the US. Prior to leaving for the Bahamas, I researched what would be needed for our entry into Puerto Rico. The prime thing that is needed is a US Customs Decal.

To get the US Customs Decal you visit the website for US Customs and Border Protection [https://dtops.cbp.dhs.gov/main/#].Its a relatively simple process to register as a user and then apply for a decal online.Within 5 days our decal number was issued and it could be viewed online. The actual physical decal showed up at my farther’s house several weeks later. But all you really need is the decal number. The fee is $27.50 for a year for a private vessel and there was an online user fee of $5 as well.

When we arrived in Puerto Rico we flew the yellow Q flag, as you do when ever you enter a new country. But since this was an American controlled area and we already had our US Customs Decal the process got considerably easier for us.We simply called into the local US Customs and Immigration office (the number was on Active Captain and in information the marina gave us when we arrived). We were able to check in over the phone following a 10 minute conversation that mostly covered spots not to miss while in Puerto Rico. Sea Frog and Last Tango didn’t have a US Customs Decal and had to rent a car the next day to go to the US Customs and Immigration office to get their decal. Party of Five are Canadians so all five of them had to go to the office to present and show valid passports.

The marina we choose to make our initial base for clearing in and provision was Marina Pescaderia in Port Real (Mayaguez) .It was a medium sized marina with decent facilities. The best part of the marina was the little restaurant at the end of the dock. The people that worked there were great! Nelly, the young women who is the chef is great and creative. She even played dominos with us one night. The bar was cool and had great fresh cocktails. They introduced me to one of my favorite new island drinks: Scotch with coconut water and coconut water ice cubes.

The marina also offered reasonable car rentals.You could get a compact car for around $30 a day right there. Which was great because within a short drive there were all kinds of great options for provisions and supplies.We hit a Home Depot, Walmart, Sam’s Club and a decent grocery store. The prices were really close to what we had in the States and that was a great break for the budget from the expensive Bahamas. We had a car with Travis and Daph from Party of Five.We filled it to capacity twice!

Totally restocked and having our fill of marinas over the past week, it was time to head out on the hook again. We thought a short jump down to Boqueron would be a good way to get acclimated to being on the hook again. It was only 6 nm from the marina. One at a time we took turns moving from our slips to the fuel dock and then off towards the anchorage.Party of Five was first, followed by Sea Frog and then us. Last Tango and Sea Squirrel would go last.

About halfway to the anchorage we started seeing some really dark clouds and hearing thunder. We called ahead to Party of Five. They were just about to anchor and thought the clouds would push south of the anchorage from their vantage point. We decided to speedup and try to anchor before any potential storm hit. We also called back to the other boats that they may want to wait at the marina for this storm to pass. We anchored just as it started to down pour, however, our anchor set didn’t feel right. We decided to set the anchor alarm and watch the GPS. We could reset after the storm passed if we still didn’t like our set.

Party of Five’s thoughts that the storm would pass south of us were wrong. We got a full brunt of the storm. We had winds around 35 knots with driving rain and lots of thunder and lightening.The other two boats made it into the harbor and anchored before the storm really picked up.

We started to drag from high winds. I sat in the cockpit with the engine running ready to take action if we dragged too close to any other boats.We were only slowly dragging, so our thoughts were to wait it out if possible and re-anchor after the storm passed.While I was sitting in the cockpit, I was watching lightening strike all around us on land and out near the mouth of the harbor. The storm really resembled the “charging like bulls” description from the Thornless Path.

After about 30 minutes, the storm was starting to slow and it looked like the end was coming. Just then there was the loudest crack of thunder & lightening I have ever heard. The hair on my arms stood up from the electricity being so close. I immediately picked up the VHF and asked if everyone was ok.Party of Five responded, “we were hit!” and then nothing…..

It took a few seconds for that to register and about a minute later they came back on their handheld VHF. Everyone was ok. Most of their electronics appeared to have been fried by the hit, including their primary VHF. They were beginning the analysis of what was damaged and what still worked.

With the storm subsiding we re-anchored. When we brought up the anchor we had a 10 foot piece of pipe and some old anchor chain caught under our anchor that prevented us from setting well.We moved over to a better sand patch and set the anchor again.Feeling more confident in our holding, I packed up all my electrical tools and supplies and headed over to Party of Five. Travis and I worked for several hours to figure out what was still operational.Unfortunately, we didn’t find any of the electronics to still be working. After a few hours we called it for the night and planned to resume the next morning.

The next morning Stacey, Summer and I went over to Party of Five to resume working on the boat. Sea Frog offered to come over but they were both sick and didn’t want to expose us to their illness. Last Tango had offered to come over for moral support but didn’t have much in the way of technical skills to help.Sea Squirrel had left at first light to maintain their schedule. Travis, Rhonda and I spent the day going through the boat while Stacey and Summer kept the kids entertained. Rhonda went up the mast to do an inspection for damage and to diagnose what was damaged by the strike. We also setup some backup navigation options (lap top running Open CPN, Navionics on a phone, etc.). Using Stacey’s cellphone as a hot spot, Travis was able to order new items to replace the damaged ones. We picked a marina on the southern coast of PR as base to stay at while repairs would be made and the parts were shipped there from Defender. (Side note on Defender, when they found out what happened Defender upgraded the shipping at no charge so that the parts would get to Party of Five sooner. Great people at Defender!)

You can read all about Party of Five’s experience with the lightening strike on their blog post, Shocking!

We left at dawn to head to the next anchorage.To get on the southern coast of PR, we first had to round a cape. The Thornless Path recommends a technique for attacking the southern coast.You leave at dawn, sail as far as your can before noon and then tuck into a harbor before the afternoon breeze kicks up.The trades are still going from east to west so heading east means heading into the wind. You can sail a little more here though.You would sail southeast until around 10 am and then tack and head back towards land.

Once we rounded Cape Rojo we were official in the Caribbean Sea! Our little 31 foot sailboat has now traveled as far north as Maine and as far south as the Caribbean. 🙂

With a pieced together Party of Five, we decided to motor sail due east and stay as close to the coast as we could rather than sail following the directions in the Thornless Path.This let us stay within the protection of some of the points of land and islands along the coast.Using this coverage we were able to make good progress well into the early afternoon.We made it to our chosen anchorage by Gunica, also known as Gilligan’s Island by the locals.

Gilligan’s Island had a great lagoon in the middle of the island.It was where two channels through the mostly mangrove island cut through the islands and form a wide, shallow lagoon.The current runs from the ocean side to the lagoon.Using the mangroves to assist, you make your way against the current to the southern end of the island to where the two channels join on that side of the islands.Then you can float back down either channel like a lazy river. You can also climb up the mangroves and jump off into the channels. We stayed a couple of nights until we had confirmation that Party of Five’s new electronics had been delivered to Ponce Yacht and Fishing Club.

We made our way to Ponce.The Yacht and Fishing Club was expensive for a night but had a great weekly rate. At first Party of Five took a slip while the rest of us anchored. But after a couple of nights in the rolly anchorage, we moved into a slip as well.We all took advantage of being at the club. There were a couple of pools, showers, a grill, tables for socializing, and an address where we could have packages shipped from Amazon. We played dominos and Cards Against Humanity and had a pot luck dinner with some other cruisers that were staying at the club.

The marina proved to be a great location to get Party of Five repaired. Once the packages were in we were able to get almost all of the broken electronics replaced within the first couple of days of repairs. Unfortunately, one of the things we discovered about lightening strikes is that more things will break after time.Alternators caught fire, computers were found to be broken, plastic bushings were melted from the heat, ignition switches broke. There was little rhyme or reason to what had broke and what didn’t.

A happy coincidence of our little armada was that three of us had birthdays within a week of each other.Not just a birthday but we were all born within days of each other. Kendra, Rhonda and myself were all the exact same age.So for a week we were celebrating a birthday every other day. I just wanted a beer and some steak. Kendra wanted sushi. Rhonda wanted a girls day at the mall. We had a lot of fun.

We also took a cab ride into Ponce and hung out in the city for the day. We toured the old fire station. We also did a walking tour of the historic parts of the city. Ponce was a great place with lots of history. Unfortunately, we timed it wrong and the art museum wasn’t open. We still got to see a lot of great things in Ponce.

Ponce is actually named after Ponce de Leon and his family crest, the Lion, can be seen everywhere.

We kept hearing that the must do attraction for the area was Coffin Island. It was only about 5 nautical miles off the coast of Ponce. We thought this would make a perfect shakedown trip for Party of Five. So all of us, including Summer, piled onto Party of Five and headed out to the island. The wind was about 20 knots on the nose with some steep chop.It was a good test for the repaired boat. It was also our first time being on a cruising catamaran. I have to say we were shocked by how loud the banging on the hulls was from the waves as we powered into it. Travis said this wasn’t bad and they had far worse on some of the crossings we had recently. I can tell you Summer didn’t like it and has been a little shy on visiting catamarans since.

After a few weeks in Ponce Party of Five was mostly repaired and it was time to start heading east again. We intended to leave at first light.At 6 AM, I was up and walking Summer when the rising sun illuminated large, dark gray thunderheads. A quick check of the radar confirmed the ominous clouds had some squalls heading our way. After a quick conversation on the VHF we all decided not to leave. By 9 AM, the squalls seemed to have passed us by and we were off for Salinas. It was a short, uneventful motor sail into the wind. Shortly after lunch time we had our anchor down in an anchorage surrounded by mangroves.

Salinas was chock full of manatees. We haven’t seen so many of these sea cows in one spot since we left Florida. We had lots of fun watching them surface for air while feeding on the marine vegetation. True to form these guys were not spooked by engines or boats and we could get pretty close to them in dinghies or kayaks. Of course we never got any good photos or videos of them.

Salinas has a great cruisers bar named Sal Pa’Dentro run by Janus and his wife. In November 2015, they had suffered a fire that destroyed their bar. However, you would never know it by their great attitude and the current condition of the bar. They have worked hard to reopen the bar as quick as possible.The one thing they lost that they couldn’t replace were all the gifts from passing cruisers. We helped add to the rebuilding by leaving a burgee from our home port marina.

Sea Frog rented a car for the day and we tagged along on a trip to Old San Juan. We walked all around the island and checked out the historic fortifications and buildings. The architecture in this area is truly unique. Old world with some Caribbean flare.

After several days exploring Salinas we were anxious to get to the Spanish Virgin Islands. Going on advice from Janus and other locals, we chose to skip Vieques. Unfortunately, they are having an issue with crime right now with stolen dinghies and anchored boats being broken into.Instead we chose to follow some local knowledge from Janus and head out at midnight with the intent of making it all the way to Culebra.

Continuing on our sail along the Thorny Path to the Caribbean Islands we went from Samana in the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. The Mona Passage is considered by many to be the worst passage on the Thorny Path. There are shoals where deep, strong currents get forced up on to shallower waters. Thunder storms are knows to “charge like bulls” down the peaks of Puerto Rico and wash onto vessels with little notice (we will unfortunately learn more on this in the coming days). Most of the passage is in the lee of Puerto Rico, which could give you a break from the trades on your nose but could also give you shifty wind patterns that are hard to predict. This passage was plotted to be approximately 150 nautical miles and to take around 30 hours.

As we previously wrote, the first thing you must do to prepare to leave Dom Rep is get your Despachio. At Samana there is a port official station right at the marina but he typically doesn’t get until 9-10 AM. We spoke with him the day before we wanted to leave, as he had asked us to do when we checked in. We told him that our little armada was looking to leave as early as we could the next morning.He said he would handle our paperwork and come in a little early to get us on our way. We paid our marina bill and prepared the boat for departure. Sure enough he showed up early, around 7 am, and was over to our boat around 7:30 with the paperwork and his small security force.He boarded Smitty and just wanted to take a quick look below before he actually stood there and watched us leave the dock. He was efficient and our whole group was off the dock by 8:30 am.

We were the first out of the marina. We set a course out of Samana Harbor at a slow pace to let the rest of the group catch. Once we were all clear we headed towards the eastern coast of the Dominican Republic. As has been typical with these passages, the winds and seas were higher than forecasted. It wasn’t too bad at this point but we did have 10-15 knots of wind on the bow and the sea state was choppy at about 3 feet. We headed south east and hugged the coast as we approached Hour Glass Shoal.

Hour Glass Shoal is a large shallow area for the area. The depths go from several thousand feet around the shoal and in the middle of the Mona Passage to less than 200 feet on the shoal.So while this is not a shoal where you risk grounding your boat you still need to treat it as such. The equatorial currents will run along the southern coast of Puerto Rico and then wrap up into the Mona Passage. When those currents and ocean swells heading north hit the shoal they stack up and the sea state can go from some benign like 10 foot ocean swell at a long period but steep, high waves that rob you of momentum and can damage your boat. There are two major routes around the Hour Glass Shoal.You can continue to hug the coast and travel more due south, keeping the shoal on your port (left) side until you are in the deep water again. Then you turn east and head towards Isla de Mona. In the lee of Isla de Mona you head northeast towards your chosen harbor for making landfall.This is the path taken by motor boats typically. The course is to go north of Hour Glass Shoals by 5-10 miles, traveling a due east or slightly northeast course until you are safely in deep water and then continuing southeast in the lee of Puerto Rico. This was the course we chose. We continued southeast until we approaches the Isla Desecheo and then headed a little more south to head towards Puerto Real.

After all of the planning and hand wringing over the weather window, the Mona ended up being good to us.We had 15-25 knots of wind just off the nose most of the passage and the sea state didn’t interfere with direction or speed. It was calm enough that we trolled a line all through the Mona, with no luck unfortunately. We covered 157 nautical miles in 28 hours and were tied up at a marina in Puerto Real by around noon.

We were able to clear in over the phone since we were American citizens and already had our US Custom decal for the boat (something we learned about and ordered in the Bahamas). The others had to rent cars and go to the US Customs and Immigration office.The office was nice enough to let them do the initial checkin by phone and then go the office the next day after getting a night’s rest. Soon we would be in Caribbean Sea and on our way to St. Thomas, our ultimate destination for this year. But first there would be some major drama that would shape the next month of cruising….

Two big thanks on making this post happen.Travis on s/v Party of Five helped me put together the list of components and the basic installation and setup.Huge thanks to Jay on s/v Doctor’s Orders, fellow C310 sailor, who purchased these components for us.The support we have gotten from the C310 owners is unbelievable but Jay took it to a new level.Thanks again.

The list of components is as follows:

Bullet Titanium (2.4 GHz)

iCreatin Passive POE Injector or Gigabit POE Injector (B0135STO2S)

Trendnet 8dBi Outdoor Omni or Amped Wireless High Powered Outdoor 8dBi (he said 8 dBi is better than the higher powered ones for this use, so don’t go bigger)

TPLink AC1200 wireless router (you can just cut off the power cord at the inverter box and wire direct to the 12 volt system on the boat with a fuse in line)

ethernet cable (length depends on install but a 100 foot cord would be fine with all the components)

All can be purchased from Amazon for under $250.

Assembly is fairly straight forward.For the Bullet, open the box and only remove the Bullet.There are other components in there but you will not need them for the assembly as a wifi antenna on a boat.Attach the antenna to the top of the Bullet.Next attach the ethernet cable to the bottom of the Bullet using the waterproof housing on the Bullet. You could put up the Bullet and antenna assembly as is or you could add some additional weather proofing.For instance many boaters will use electrical tape or Rescue tape on their VHF antenna connections to make them more weather proof.You could do the same here. Personally I like Rescue tape because it doesn’t leave an adhesive residue when you remove it.

Now you have a choice to make: do you fix mount the Bullet and antenna or do you have it go up on a halyard?Fix mounting has the advantage of being always out and ready to use.But if you put it on a halyard you can adjust the height.Travis on s/v Party of Five describes wifi signals like a cone.So as they progress out from the source they have different heights that will offer the best signal strength.So being able to adjust the height will give you the best possible signal strength.I went for the halyard style install but I did run a second ethernet cable to the stern so that I could actually have the ability to install it on the stern rail and then take it down to put on a halyard for a better signal when needed.

The next big install question is 12 volt or 120 volt for the power over ethernet (POE) point and router.Both the POE point and the router in the list above are actually 12 volt units.There is a converter in the boxy plug that converts the 120 volt wall outlet power to 12 volt.You can see that by looking at the writing on the plug.So if you are only going to use the antenna on the dock you could just plug into an outlet.But if you want to use it at anchor or you just like having everything on 12 volt like me, you simply cut off the plug end and wire the ends into your 12 volt system.The tricky part of this approach is knowing which side is the positive and which is the negative.Luckily the manufacturers of these two pieces made it easy. There are white/gray dashes on one of the lines going into the plug.That is the positive wire.There are a couple of ways you can test this to find out which is which but thankfully the manufactures made it easy here.So I cut off the plugs, added ring terminals to each end and then connected them into a Blue Sea System terminal block.I often use the terminal blocks to put multiple lines together for one power run to the panel.

Next I had to find a location to mount the router.I chose to mount it upside down on the underside of the decks above the port settee.I used 3M double sided tape to mount the router.I cleaned the surfaces with isopropanol and let it try for 30-60 minutes before applying the tape.Then I ran some 12-2 tinned copper wire from the terminal buss to the electrical panel.The 12-2 wire is actually a bit of an overkill.The router draws 2 amps and the POE point 1 amp (you can get that info from the plugs that I cut off to make them 12 volt) and the run from the panel is approximately 20 feet so a total of 40 feet of distance there and back.Using a wire sizing chart, like the Blue Seas Systems one here (large PDF), you only needed 16 gauge wire.But 12-2 wire is what I had on the boat so I used that.

Final assembly is to plug the ethernet cable from the Bullet into the POE point, plug the POE point into router and power up the system.An important thing to note here is that the POE point actually comes with two pieces.One is for the router end and the other for the Bullet end.You don’t need the Bullet end, just throw that away. When you plug the POE point into the router, use one of the spots labeled “1-4”.Don’t use the spot for internet source.Seems a little wrong but trust me.

Now that you have it assembled, the hard part starts: you need to configure the Bullet and the router.I am going to give this in the easy way, which involves plugging the Bullet directly into your computer first.I actually couldn’t do this because we have a MacBook Air and those don’t have ethernet ports.So I did mine through wifi and the router which is harder.If anyone needs this breakdown I can give that later, just email or PM me.

The first step is to set you computer to have a Static IP address. This is different than how your computer will be setup for most people.Here is how to do it on a Mac and here is how to do it on a Windows computer.

Once that is done, connect the POE point to your computer’s ethernet port. Now open up your favorite web browser (I prefer Google Chrome but IE, Firefox, etc. will do).In the address bar type in “192.168.20.1” and hit enter.This is the factor address setting for the Bullet.That will bring you to an address screen that will ask for your username and password.The factory setting is “ubnt” for both.Once you enter that in and gain access to the Bullet the first thing you should do is change the username and password.Click on the “System” tab and change the username and password.

This is the first place you will hit the quirk of working with the Bullet.After you have changed the username and password you will need to go to bottom of the page and click the “Change” button (bottom arrow above).Once you hit “Change” a new line will appear at the top of the screen asking if you want to apply the changes. You need to hit “Apply” before moving on to the next step.

This will come up often and was a big source of frustration to me when I would forget to hit “Change” then “Apply” after making some programing errors and I couldn’t figure out why my programing wasn’t working.

Next step is to click on the “Network” tab.There are several changes that need to be made on this tab.

First, under “Network Role” change the “Network Mode” to “Router”.

Second, under “WAN Network Settings” change the IP Address to “DHCP”.Also, make sure the “NAT” is enabled.

Now under the “LAN Network Settings” is where things can get a little tricky.Start by enabling the “DHCP Server” (red box in the middle of the screen shot).Next go to the “IP Address”.You need to choose your new IP address for your network.This could be almost any numbers.Most networking gear comes with 192.168.1.1, or some small variation on this number, as standard.I am sure there is a reason for this but I am not a computer guy enough to know why that is.But you will need to set the number for the Bullet and later the router to similar numbers.You can see I used 192.168.50.1 while doing this write up.I did change it after I did all these screen shots.Someone could conceivably crack into your network if they knew these numbers (not sure how as this is way above my head).My recommendation is to keep with the 192.168.XX.1 where the “XX” could be any number from 1-99.This will just make things easier.The “Netmask” can stay with the default of 255.255.255.0.

Next you need to set the “Range Start” and “Range Finish”.These are the numbers that are available to be assigned to your computer latter when you actually log onto the internet.It needs to have the same first 3 sets of numbers you used for the IP address above.Keeping with the numbers I used for this setup that was 192.168.50.The last sets of numbers actually defines the range.For ease of programing just use 100 to 200 here.So the start is 192.168.50.100 and the finish is 192.168.50.200.Remember to change the 50 to what ever number you choose for the IP address above.

****Now make sure to hit “Change” then “Apply”.

That completes the programing of the Bullet.Now go back to the beginning and change your computers IP Address from Static back to automatic.

Next step is to program a Static IP address into the router.You need to give your router a static IP address in the same range as what you gave the Bullet. So using the address of 192.168.50.1 for the Bullet, I used 192.168.50.2 for the router.For the TP Link here is a link on how to do this programing.

Once you have programmed the router, now you can plug the Bullet into the router.Remember, you don’t use the “Internet” source ethernet port but any of the ports labeled 1-4.Doesn’t matter which one. And its the POE point that gets plugged into the router, the Bullet is plugged into the POE point and you have power to the POE Point and the router. Now power up.Give everything about 5 minutes to startup and get ready for use.

Log into the Bullet by opening a web browser and typing the IP address into the top bar (i.e. 192.168.50.1). Then put in your new username and password. Now click on the “Wireless” tab. This is how you will go to use the WiFi antenna anytime you want to use the internet from your boat.

Click the “Select” button next to “SSID”.This will bring up a list of available networks.

The two columns on this page that I pay the most attention to are the “Encryption” and “SSID”.If you find “None” under “Encryption” that means this is an open network and you can join without a password.Unfortunately you can see that there are no open networks near Maho Bay on St. John.This is one of our favorite spots but unfortunately when we are here I have no communication.No WiFi and no cell signal.That means very little ability to check weather or hear if I have a new charter coming in that I have to get back to St. Thomas for. But such is the price to pay to swim with hawksbill turtles and catch lobster for dinner along some iconic beaches.

If there where an open network you simply click on the little circle next to the MAC address for the network and then hit “Select” at the bottom of the screen.You will then go back to the programing screen and need to hit “Change” and “Apply” again like we discussed above. Give the antenna a few seconds and you should be online.

To verify that you are online you can check the “Main” tab.If you go down near the bottom and click on “DHCP Client” you should have an IP address listed and the status should be connected.Also there is a “Signal Strength” bar that will tell you how good of a signal you have.If you opted for the halyard installation you can move the antenna up and down on the halyard and see where you get a getter signal strength.It will change with height and higher is not always better.

Now sometimes you might have a specific network you want to connect to.This could be your marina or a local bar.We will sometimes put up the antenna and see what bars have a good signal.Then we go over to that bar and have a drink and ask them for the network password.Most of the time they have no problem giving the password to a customer but don’t want an open network.Some places have caught on to this and will take your phone to put in the password so you can’t log on from a WiFi antenna. Once you have a network name and password you log in a little different.You go to the “Wireless” tab and hit “Select” next to SSID, but now you are looking for the network name.Note the security type “WPA” or “WPA2”.Select the network and connect.But you have an additional step on the “Wireless” tab before hitting “Change” and “Apply”.Down at the bottom of the screen you should see a section for “Wireless Security”.

In the “Wireless Security” section, select the correct security type and put in the password.Now hit “Change” and “Apply”. You should be connected and can check it the same as described above.

Now I will have to admit, the programing side of this was a little harder than I expected when we started this project.The very first time we set up everything I had Travis from s/v Party of Five with me.But the original Bullet I got from Amazon was defective.So by the time I got the replacement Bullet, we were in St. Thomas and Party of Five had moved on to Grenada. So I had to spend some time researching how to do all the programing. But once you get through it once the operation becomes pretty simple.

Here is another downside, I have had this post in draft for almost two weeks. But in the USVI finding an open wifi or even a bar’s wifi that can work for posting pictures was nearly impossible. Everyone is shutting down their networks and a lot of bars are figuring out ways around making their network available to cruisers. But in the US you will likely have much better luck.

Continuing on our sail along the Thorny Path to the Caribbean Islands we went from Luperon to Samana in the Dominican Republic. For this passage we were traveling along the north east coast of the Dominican Republic. We were traveling in a general southeast direction which means we are going head on into the trades and equatorial currents.That makes sailing difficult or near impossible at times. So we prepared for what we expected to be a motorsailing passage of around 130 nautical miles.

We also were hoping for a weather window that would allow us to just keep going right to Puerto Rico. This is not unheard of and often cruisers will get lucky and be able to keep going rather than turn into Samana Bay. That would make a motorsailing passage of 250 nautical miles. Being the small boat in the group this posed a small problem. A passage of 250 nautical miles at an average of 5 knots is a 50 hour passage.We burn between 0.5 to 0.9 gallons an hour depending on how hard we push the motor; typically its around 0.6 gallons an hour at a comfortable cruising speed. That would mean we would use between 25 and 45 gallons of diesel for this passage (30 gallons based on our average). Our boat holds 26 gallons in her fuel tank.We typically have one 5-gallon gerry can on deck of additional diesel. But you typically don’t want your tank to drop below 1/4 full because then you can suck up sediment, debris or biological growth from the tank and clog your fuel filters. So that meant we wanted to have 40-50 gallons of diesel on board to do this passage.The larger boats we have been traveling with have much larger fuel tanks and a passage of this length is within their fuel tanks capacity. So to prepare for this passage we drained the gasoline from our two 5-gallon gerry cans we typically use for reserve fuel for the dinghy and the Honda generator. We let those sit open for a few days to volatilize off most of the residual gasoline. We also borrowed another 5-gallon can from Sea Frog.We had Handy Andy fill up our tank and all the gerry cans. That gave us around 46 gallons of diesel (I say around because you can actually fit about 5.8 gallons in our two tall cans). So if the motor sailing went well, we would have plenty of fuel. If we had to fight high seas and strong currents we might be pulling in Puerto Rico on fumes. But we are a sailboat after all so it’s not like we would be without a means of propulsion. We would just have to watch our fuel usage and maybe sail some sections if we got too low on fuel.

This passage is made more difficult than it needs to be by the bureaucracy of the Dominican Republic. In most countries you check into the country once, typically purchase a cruising permit, and then are allowed to sail from harbor to harbor during your stay.Sometimes you need to check out of the country before leaving. With the Dominican Republic you need to check out before leaving each harbor and then check into the next harbor. Often there is a fee for each check out and check in. The legitimacy of these fees is another matter and not to mention the “gifts” often requested.

To make matters more complicated you can only check out and in during certain hours. For instance, if you were to try and follow Passages South: The Thornless Path to Windward Bruce Van Sant recommends you leave Luperon in the evening, around 10 PM. This lets you take advantage of the night lees that come about from the land breeze over powering the reduced trades that are often seen at night. The advantage of this is that you can sail relatively close to the coast with reduced seas and winds that will either help you on your journey or be a non-factor. However the Luperon Commandant will only allow check outs up to 6 PM.You must clear the harbor by around 6 PM and radio in to him to confirm that you have left. Cruisers that have attempted to check out during the afternoon but not leave until 9-10 PM have reported being chased down by the local port authorities and made to turn around.

Another part of the bureaucracy is that if you request your Despacho, the name for the paper they give you when you check out, and give the Commandant a destination of Puerto Rico but then decide to stop due to weather, mechanical problems, or what ever, you will need to pay all of the check in fees again. But if you give the Commandant a destination of another port in the Dominican Republic and you stop at any port between where you requested the Despacho and the destination you gave the Commandant then you only have to pay the local port fees.But what happens if you continue on to the Puerto Rico if you have a good weather window? Well as it turns out, the US Customs authorities don’t care about the Despacho. So the only risk you have is that if you return the Dominican Republic they may catch you for not checking out appropriately. But while there are computer records of the processing paperwork, it appears unlikely that there is a centralized system to comparing these records. So it seemed like a minor risk to us.We even discussed this with the Commandant and he recommended we get our Despacho for Samana or a port further southeast.

So considering all these factors, Sea Frog, Party of Five and Smitty decided to get our Despacho from Luperon with a destination of Samana. After hearing of our plans two other vessels, Sea Squirrel and Last Tango, decided to head out as well. This meant heading out into the highest winds and seas of the day and hoping we could make some good progress until the night lees kicked in.

We cleared the harbor, radioed the Commandant and headed out into the Atlantic to begin our passage.As soon as we headed east out of the protection of the harbor we were met with 20-25 knot winds and 4 to 6 foot seas on the nose. The wind was so dead on the nose that raising the mainsail would do nothing but flog.This meant slow going.Smitty can typically maintain around 3.5 to 4.5 knots in these conditions.Sea Frog has the hardest time maintaining speed under these conditions and was making around 2.5 to 3.5 knots. So Smitty and Party of Five backed down our throttles to keep our group together. Sea Squirrel continued on at around 4.5 to 5.5 knots and Last Tango actually departed Luperon about 30 minutes behind the rest and were keeping a decent pace with the overall group.

As night approached we were all in radio range with most boats in visual contact with each other. We eagerly anticipated the onset of the night lee. It never really came. As we approach Puerto Plata around 10-11 PM the winds and seas were still much higher than we anticipated and progress was slow. Following recommendations from Bruce Van Sant, we tried going closer to shore. The theory is that since the trades were higher than expected we would need to get closer to shore to see the night lee affect. Bruce recommends sailing in 80 to 120 foot deep water to best see the night lee while avoiding the flotsam that accumulates a little further offshore. We found that if we got much closer we could see some improvements in the conditions. This meant operating at night in 40 feet of water. For us this is a little shallow for comfort when operating at night in unfamiliar waters.We prefer our night passages to be in hundreds, if not thousands, of feet of water. But the conditions were better so we continued on closer to shore.

We were making slightly better speed, around 4 knots.We were monitoring the other boats in our armada and unknown boats by radar. Sea Frog, Party of Five, Sea Squirrel and Last Tango also have AIS. The chart plotters were watch diligently as we were close to areas with reefs and rocks that could force us further from shore to avoid running aground. Everything was beginning to proceed as planned with this passage until Party of Five almost hit a fishing boat. This is not the US and many of the small fishing boats don’t follow lighting regulations. These small fishing boats are also too small to give a radar signal in these conditions. If it were flat calm we might have been able to see them on radar but not in 3 to 5 foot seas. They just blend in with the nose of the waves and spray. So while we were all using the technology available to us, we still had one of the boats in our group come within 20 feet of another vessel that they didn’t know was there until they were passing it. Scary stuff!Enough so that Smitty went back to the 100 foot deep waters to reduce the chances of a similar incident or worse.

We continued to proceed down the coast of the Dominican Republic.By around 1AM it became clear to all of us that the window we thought we had for crossing all the way to Puerto Rico wasn’t there.The forecasts were slightly off and the conditions were making our passage too slow to reliably go for the full trip. So we set our sights on Samana. Around 4 AM we started looking at our progress and it appeared we would round Cabo Frances around 6-7 AM and that we would be traveling towards Cabo Samana when the mid day to afternoon trades would be starting to kick up.In Bruce Van Sant’s words this was suicide.

Instead of trying to continue on to Samana, we decided to anchor at Rio San Juan to wait for the next night’s lee to round Cabo Frances and Cabo Samana. The anchorage at Rio San Juan was behind a reef that was poorly charted. So we slowed our speed to ensure we would enter the cut in the reef after sunrise so we could see the reef if possible. Smitty lead the way to scope out the anchorage for the deeper draft vessels. Normally we leave this duty to Party of Five because they are a catamaran with the shallowest draft of all of us but we decided to give them a break on this anchorage. We used Bruce Van Sant’s waypoints and descriptions to enter the anchorage. While we couldn’t see the actual reef, there were some indications of its locations on the surface of the water. We made our way in and set the hook in 15 feet.Securely anchored it was time for a nap.

Around 2 PM my nap was disturbed by the local Commandant. Lacking any boats of his own at this port, he used a local fisherman to bring him out to talk to the boats anchored in his harbor. He checked our paperwork and was very courteous and professional. When he was done, he did ask for a gift for the fisherman. The navy does not provide the Commandant with a boat but they expect him to perform this duty. They also don’t give him a stipend to pay the local fisherman to give him a lift out to the boats anchored in his harbor. So the fisherman give him rides out of their sense of obligation to their country. So a small gift for these fisherman is not out of line. We gave them some cans of cold Coke and some cookies.

That afternoon we had a weather discussion based on VHF radio. Our access to weather data was significantly reduced since there were no open wifi networks within range of Party of Five’s wifi antenna.We used sources like SSB transmissions, InReach weather texts and texts from other cruisers over the InReach to get the weather. Based on what we were getting for weather reports it looked like it would be similar to the previous night. We decided we would head out just after sunset before we lost light to work our way out of the cut.

One good difference for the second night’s passage was that the wind would be slightly off the bow making motor sailing more of an option. So once we cleared the reef, we hoisted the mainsail with the first reef in. We rounded the lee of Cabo Frances and the conditions were similar to the previous evening. We continue on, staying relatively close to land in the 80-120 feet of water area.Once we fully rounded the cape and started heading south, the conditions improved greatly.It was still more wind and seas then the forecast said but it was much more comfortable. We were able to let the autopilot steer and just make up some time and distance.

For much of the passage from Cabo Frances to Cabo Samana, Smitty lead the pack. We had taken a more favorable angle that let us motorsail at around 6 to 6.5 knots while the engine was only running at 1,700 RPMs (below our cruising range of 2,200 to 2,600 RPMs).As we approached dawn, Sea Squirrel passed us and kept going around the Cabo Samana.We further backed off our throttle to keep the rest of the group close and within sight. We even deployed a fishing line, not that we had any bites.

We were docked at a first class resort marina by noon.Passage two of three over with and it was time to soak in one of the infinity pools and look for our weather window for crossing the Mona Passage.

As the sun was rising, we began to see the breathtaking views of the Dominican Republic (DR or DomRep).Our first stop was Luperon.The bay here is stunning – picture the mountains of New England with a line of mangroves at the foothills that roll right into the water.Everything here is so lush and green.The bay is an ideal hurricane hole for boats of all sizes and the food and beverages are shockingly cheap.I can see why so many people end up moving here permanently. If it wasn’t for the poor water-quality (definitely no swimming!), we would have spent much longer here.

Luperon – Puerto Plata

I cannot say that it is easy to check in at this port of call.First of all, my Spanish es no bueno, or shall I say my Spanglish, so dealing with several different officials (whom speak/understand very little or no english) was a bit of a challenge.

Step one:The Marina Guerra (Coast Guard) will board your boat as soon as you are anchored or moored. No $ is required to give to them but be ready with copies of passports, vessel documentation, departure form from last port of call, and ice cold beers (yes, they absolutely will ask for beer!)

Step two:The Captain goes to shore with all of the same documents and tries to figure out which of the three rooms in a very hot, not air-conditioned trailer to go to first and what fees are actually due.The fees that are required to be paid are not clearly documented, so when you go to check-in by boat be sure to bring lots of pesos or USD. The cost for our 31-foot vessel with two adults and one dog was as follows (amounts in USD): Cruising Permit/Other Fee $60, Tourist Card- $10 per person, Harbor Charge $25 (for a 10-day stay)

Step Three: When you are ready to leave, you play a similar game in order to get your despacho (exit permit).However, no fees are required to leave.

We decided to make a day-trip to Damajaqua Cascades (27 waterfalls) with the crews of sv Sea Frog and sv Party of Five. So, trying to figure out how to get nine people there was a bit of a challenge. Travel choices in the DR are as follows: car rental, guagua*, donkey/horse, or motoconchos**.

*Guagua is a small car or van that is overstuffed with people (you will literally see people overflowing from the vehicle), far exceeding their recommended (safe) capacity.

**Motoconcho is a motorbike that is used for public transportation. You will see as many as four adults + children on one bike. You will also see furniture and other large items being moved on these bikes.

As we had a former local resident in our mix (thank you Darren!), he hooked us up with a rental….which turned out to be someone’s personal SUV (not the van that we were expecting)…thank god we were traveling with three skinny kids!

We spent another day touring Puerto Plata. We took in the sites, made & smoked cigars at the Cigar Factory, drank rum on the Brugal Rum Factory tour, ate chocolate on the tour at the Del Oro Chocolate Factory, and of course had beers on the beach.

After leaving Luperon, we stayed a couple nights in Samana in order to wait out weather before making our way across the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.

When you sail the Thorny Path to the Caribbean Islands there are three passages that really give this trip it’s name.Turks & Caicos to the Dominican Republic, the north east coast of the Dominican Republic from Luperon to Samana and the Mona Passage from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. These passages are the toughest to sail because you are trying to cover large distances into the trade winds, against the equatorial currents and with relatively large seas stealing your forward momentum.

Like most cruisers that travel this path we often consult Passages South: The Thornless Path to Windwardby Bruce Van Sant.Bruce is a sailor who has done this trip many times and now lives in the Dominican Republic. He does share some great information but as with all things cruising, everything depends on the weather.

After spending some time in Providenciales, we moved on to Cockburn Harbor in South Caicos to stage for the crossing and await our weather window.As we mentioned in our post on Turks and Caicos, we were now traveling with some new friends on s/v Sea Frog and s/v Party of Five. We were also joined by our friend Fabio on s/v Odoya and s/v Sea Squirrel.Sea Squirrel was buddy boating with s/v Notre Voyage who chose to stage in a slightly more south location.Sea Squirrel and Notre Voyage were looking to make the crossing on the next weather window as well.

The passage is about 110 nautical miles which should take approximately 22 hours traveling at an average of 5 knots.Waiting on weather is one of the things that cruising boats just have to get used to.You want to see a clear window for at least twice as long as you need.Ideally you want a window three times what you need.In this case that would be three days.The first day to let the seas calm down some, the second day to make the passage and the last day as a contingency incase something goes wrong or the window starts to collapse on you.In the US and even the Bahamas, checking weather was relatively easy. You use your phone for cellular data or a wifi network somewhere to get online and check weather. The sources we like to use are Wind Finder, Windyty, Passage Weather, NOAA offshore weather, Weather.com and Weather Underground. In Cockburn Harbor there were no real open WiFi networks and none of us had a cell phone that worked in Turks and Caicos. We did find a store that had WiFi in the store and we could get some internet while we were in the store.

There is also the weather guru: Chris Parker. Chris provides a paid weather routing service with several levels of subscription. He also does a broadcast every morning except Sundays on single side band radio (SSB).SSB is like HAM radio but on boats, its capable of broadcasting over long distances but requires specialized equipment. SSB radios can run as high as $3,000 for a complete system capable of receiving and sending transmissions. Our budget and space didn’t allow for a full system.Instead we opted for an SSB receiver only.It allows us to listen to Chris Parker in the morning and a few other weather broadcasts throughout the day. Sea Frog has a complete SSB system and a subscription to Chris Parker that allows her to ask specific routing questions over the SSB and she gets email updates a few times a day.

Herein lies our dilemma. The day we got into South Caicos was probably the best day to make the crossing. We should have just turned right after crossing the Caicos bank and just kept going to the Dominican Republic.But we hadn’t checked out with Customs from Turks and Caicos. So that wasn’t an option. So we dropped the hook in South Caicos and began the process to clear out. It took over 3 hours just to get the Customs officer to come and see us and then less than 10 minutes per boat to get cleared out.You had to fill out a form and pay a fee.Really it was all about the fee.But we were good to go and could leave on the next weather window.

Unfortunately our window wasn’t there.We had missed the good window.After waiting another day after clearing out, we decided to go for it on a less then ideal. The forecast was for 15-25 knots of wind, more or less on the nose or just off, and seas 4-6 feet with a shorter period. We decided to head out of the harbor at noon and if the conditions were too bad we could always head back to harbor and wait for the next window which was more than a week away. Fabio was under the weather and didn’t join us for this passage.

Notre Voyage and Sea Squirrel also decided to go on this window. Notre Voyage is an older Gemini catamaran and many people question this boat for offshore work. One of the flaws that people point out on this boat is the solid bridge deck between the bows instead of trampolines. This arrangement doesn’t allow the hulls to move as much as needed in heavy seas and can result in a lot of water being taken over the deck. About 5 hours into the passage Notre Voyage put out essentially a mayday call.One of their hulls was half full of water and they didn’t know why. At first Sea Frog, Party of Five and Smitty slowed down. After a new more radio communications Notre Voyage thought they may have to abandon ship.Our three boats turned around and started heading back to them as fast as we could travel. We were about 4-6 miles from them at this point.

We were in some kind of rough conditions.Winds were 18 knots with gusts up to 35 knots when we got near some squalls.Seas were very confused.We had 6-8 foot ocean swell on the port bow and 4-6 foot wind driven waves on the port stern. Sometimes they would meet and combine and you would end up with 8 to 12 foot waves breaking on your boat.We got pooped several times where the wave came right over the side of the boat and into the cockpit.We had the hatch boards in and the waves would just sweep right out the open stern.So no big deal for us.

We reached Notre Voyage and circled around their boat for an hour or two while they figured out what was going on.They don’t have a manual bilge pump on the boat and were waiting for the small electric bilge pump to get the water out.The rest of us advised them to use buckets to help drain the hull as quick as possible.After getting the hull partially drained they found the problem and had the hull mostly drain. The Gemini has sail lockers in the bow of each hull.The drain for the sail locker had gotten plugged with trash or debris and the locker was overflowing into the bilge of the hull.So much water was coming over the bows of the Gemini that it filled the sail lockers with water that then drained into the hull and over whelmed the bilge pump so the hull filled with water.But at first they didn’t know where it was coming from.They thought the hull had separated from the pounding and they were going to have to abandon ship.

Later we found out they were much closer to loosing the boat then any of us knew. A similar Gemini has the same issue last year and when one of the hulls go too full of water it flipped.Thankfully that didn’t happen here.

With the situation under control we started back towards Luperon.We had lost about 3 hours. Plus now we didn’t have the light to cross this shallow bank and get a better angle on the wind. So now we were motorsailing almost dead into the wind and waves.

About 2AM we started hitting squalls.We could see them forming on radar.We tried to avoid them and did for the most part but the cells that were forming were also joining together and making really large squalls.At one point we were about a half mile from Party of Five when a lightening bolt hit in between us.

We ended up making it into Luperon around 2PM.The passage had taken just over 26 hours. We had motor sailed the whole trip and averaged over 5 knots when you remove the time we were helping Notre Voyage and avoiding squalls.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain